Archaic law boosts illegal clinics

Shocking but true. A doctor can run a clinic in Maharashtra without any licence. Also, he/she can have an operation theatre and perform all sorts of small procedures on a day-care centre basis without seeking registration under any law.Umesh Isalkar | TNN | March 11, 2017, 07:50 IST

Archaic law boosts illegal clinicsPUNE: Shocking but true. A doctor can run a clinic in Maharashtra without any licence. Also, he/she can have an operation theatre and perform all sorts of small procedures on a day-care centre basis without seeking registration under any law.

This is because Maharashtra still follows the age-old Bombay Nursing Home Registration Act 1949 (BNHRA) that mandates registration only for running hospitals or nursing homes providing hospitalization services. Simply put together, it allows a number of healthcare units, including clinic/dispensary or day-care centre, to run without being registered and regulated.

And this systemic lacunae, experts said, can even lend legal cover to practitioners like homeopath Babasaheb Khidrapure, who has been arrested in connection with the death of a pregnant woman during an abortion at his unregistered hospital and the subsequent recovery of 19 aborted fetuses in a stream at Mhaisal village in the Sangli district.To circumvent this lacunae, the Parliament had passed the Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Act 2010 in 2012. Each state is expected to enact the law in their region since health is a state subject. Despite the law being enacted by a sizable number of states, including Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and almost all UTs, Maharashtra still continues to follow the BNHRA, expert said.

"Khidrapure's case has clearly underlined that it is high time that the state legislature adopts and enacts the Clinical Establishment Act 2010," Rajiv Yeravdekar, ex-member of the Medical Council of India's Board of Governors, said.

There is also misconception among doctors that any place where any surgical procedure is performed should be duly registered with the local health authority under the BNHRA. However, this is not possible, advocate and medico-legal expert Milind Salunkhe said. "A clinical establishment having a facility of operation theatre along with anaesthetic drugs and surgical instruments does not fall under the purview of the BNHRA. The healthcare establishments that provide for small procedures and surgeries, such as cataract, abortion, liposuction and hair transplant, are not mandated to seek any licence or registration. Since they are not mandated to seek registration they can remain unregulated and free from periodic check-ups, inspections, renewals activities," Salunkhe said.

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